Confuse and Conquer: Bankers to the Barricades!

The trouble with the original Hank Paulson TARP plan last fall that handed $700 billion to the biggest banks in compensation for their bad judgment was that it was too transparent. By the time we got to the Christmas holidays, everyone had figured it out and was grumbling.

Paulson spooned out the bailouts over a four month period after warning Congress that the world would end if they didn’t give Hank the money by the weekend. Some in Congress finally began to look at what they had approved, once they noticed that the public was beginning to suspect a con job. Obama, a far wiser politician, has taken steps to avoid these errors in his approach to our economy’s continuing collapse.

First he bribed us with a $787 billion dollar economic stimulus program designed to ease our pain, protect the unemployed, and give the states huge sums to hand out more or less as they wished. Second, he directed his new Treasury Secretary, the bright and shiny penny, Timothy Geithner, to fashion a series of second phase bank bailout programs that would be far more opaque than Paulson’s, and which would be distributed quickly, in very large tranches (a phony French financial phrase meaning Gobs of Cash), and for the most part outside Congress’ purview. That should take care of those grumbling voters.

Now Geithner has encountered a sea of troubles with his PPIP, the Public-Private Partnership Program. The idea was to show that private sector funds could indeed form a partnership with us taxpayers to soak up the troubled assets resulting from the collapse of the housing market, the financial derivatives trading, the credit default swaps and the like. Geithner has been working feverishly on a new strategy since February, but has yet to announce his definitive attack plan. We will examine Geithner’s various proposals in a minute. But first, let’s try to understand one basic question:

WHATS WRONG WITH OUR BIG BANKS ANYWAY?
“The dirty little secret”, writes economist F. William Engdahl in Global Research 3/30/09, “which Geithner is going to great degrees to obscure from the public is very simple: there are only at most five US banks which are the source of the toxic poison that is causing such dislocation in the world financial system. The heart of the present problem, and the reason ordinary loan losses as in prior bank crises are not the problem, is a variety of exotic financial derivatives most especially the so-called credit Default Swaps.” “Today five US banks hold 96% of all US bank derivatives positions” (data from Federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released March 30th, 2009). Most of America’s second and third tier banks never traded in these derivatives.

The five are, in declining order of their total derivatives holdings: JPMorgan Chase: $88 trillion in derivatives; Bank of America: $38 trillion; Citibank: $32 trillion; Goldman Sachs: $30 trillion; Wells Fargo-Wachovia: $5 trillion. “These banks consider themselves too big to fail and thus can dictate policy to the Federal Government. Some have called it a bankers’ coup d’etat, and it definitely isn’t healthy” Engdahl continues. “Should this become generally known, it would focus voter attention on real solutions”.

“The Federal Government has long had laws in place to deal with insolvent banks: The FDIC places such a bank in receivership and its assets and liabilities are sorted out by independent audit. Irresponsible management is purged, stockholders lose, and the purged bank is eventually split into smaller units and when again healthy, resold to the public” explains Engdahl. “This is what Wall Street and Geithner are frantically trying to prevent.” The longer the government delays and refuses to demand full and independent audit to determine the solvency or insolvency of these five banks, the more costly it will be for all of us.

BUT WASN’T PAULSON’S $700 BILLION PLAN LAST FALL GOING TO CURE THIS?
When Hank Paulsen panicked the Congress into giving him $700 bn back in September 2008, supposedly to buy bad assets, he blew the money on the banks themselves: $125 bn to the 9 biggest banks and another $125 to smaller regional banks without any accountability. Then $80 bn went to the ailing AIG, several tens of thousands to Citigroup, and $20 bn to auto companies. Now there is less than $135 bn left and nothing much to show for it. None was used to buy bad assets because the banks wouldn’t sell them at anywhere near their market value since this would appear as a huge loss on the bank’s books. They continue to carry them on the books at inflated prices, and dare not reveal that, like the Emperor, they have no clothes. Paulson did use the funds to buy preferred non-voting stock in some banks, giving him little or no leverage over bank decisions, compensation packages or bonus policy. Paulson’s program temporarily shored up the hole in bank balance sheets without attacking the cause. Then our boy Hank was saved by that stirring ceremony on the steps of the Capital on January 20th. He has not made even a squeak since.

SHOULDN’T OBAMA’S ECONOMIC STIMULUS PLAN HAVE HELPED?
The $787 billion program does not address any of the problems in the financial sector. It is merely a stop gap measure to expand the food stamp program, increase unemployment insurance, provide some assistance with medical costs for the jobless, and hand out grants to states for their favorite public works programs. A total of 38% of the $787 bn are for various tax cuts. The job creation program, thought by many to be the key issue just now, received only $29 bn for 2009 and a total of only $200 billion over the entire life of the program. The jobs program is too slow and too small: it may create a few hundred thousand jobs in contrast to the 5 to 7 million who will lose their jobs in 2009. With this staggering level of unemployment and consequent decline in consumer spending, the Stimulus Package looks like a thin gruel indeed. A second stimulus bill will be necessary later this year.

GEITHNER AS THE POSTER BOY OF ZOMBIE ECONOMICS
“Geithner has become the Poster Boy for everything that’s wrong with the government’s scatterbrain financial rescue plan” complained Mike Whitney 3/23/09. “He played a central role in the $165 million AIG bonus scandal and helped ignite a huge public fury. Now he must finally announce the details of his long-awaited plan for removing up to $1 trillion of toxic assets from the balance sheets of the country’s biggest banks”. The delays have resulted in part from the fact that the hedge funds and other private sector investors, whom Geithner had expected to join with the government (read taxpayer) in picking up these banks’ toxic assets have been very reluctant to play along. Consequently he sweetened up the deal several times before announcing the heavily subsidized program described by Nobel Prize Economist Joseph Stiglitz below.

Geithner’s plan initially released at the end of March is described by Jack Rasmus in Z Magazine 4/01/09 as a combination of three proposals to stabilize the Financial System:

Part 1 is a $1 trillion effort called PPIP – Public Private Investment Fund which we discuss below.
Geithner also plans two additional programs but has provided little descriptive material so far:
Part 2 is TALF – Term Asset Backed Securities Lending Facility at a cost of another 1 trillion.
Part 3 is HASP – Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan: a $275 billion to subsidize mortgage lenders, servicers and investors.

Joseph Stiglitz, NYTimes 4/30/09, describes Part 1 – the PPIP as follows: “ A win win lose proposition: banks win, investors win, taxpayers lose”. He reminds us of what caused this mess: “banks got themselves into trouble by over-leveraging – by using relatively little of their own capital and borrowing heavily – to buy extremely risky real estate assets using complex instruments called collateralized debt obligations”.

Stiglitz explains how the PPIP would work (We call this the Outside Bidder Alternative): “Take a toxic asset likely to be worth somewhere between zero and $200 in a year’s time. The ‘average’ value is $100 in a competitive market. Under the Geithner Plan, if a private investor is willing to pay $150, then he puts up $12 and the Treasury the remainder – $138 of which $12 is equity and the remaining $126 is a loan at zero interest. If in a year’s time the asset value declines to zero, the private investor loses $12, and the government loses $138. If the value after a year increases to $200, then the partners split the $74 of net gain after paying back the $126 loan. The private partner gains $25 on a $12 investment. The govt, who risked $138 gets back only $37. This is ersatz capitalism – privatizing the gains and socializing the losses!”

Fortunately, the private sector still shows almost no appetite for investing in these toxic assets, even when they only have to put up $12 for a $50 share and can lose no more than the $12. They know that the real value of these toxic assets is close to zero – so why put even a penny into them? Therefore Geithner continues to search for the magic formula that will protect the naked bankers and keep taxpayers confused. The naked bankers are indeed like the zombie who keeps coming back.

The Inside Bidder Gambit as recently devised by Geithner and Larry Summers is even worse than the Outside Bidder shuffle, in the view of Columbia University Economist Jeffry Sachs, Huffington Post 4/06/09: “Consider a toxic asset held by Citibank with a face value of $1 million and a market value of zero. An outside bidder such as the ‘private investor’ described by Stiglitz above, would pay nothing for such as asset. Suppose, however, that Citibank sets up a Citibank Public-Private Investment Fund (CPPIF) under the Inside Bidder Gambit. The CPPIF bids full face value of $1 million for the worthless asset because it can borrow $850k from the FDIC and get $75k from the Treasury to make the purchase! Citibank will only have to put in $75k of the total.

“Citibank thereby receives $1 million for the worthless asset while the CPPIF ends up with a perfectly worthless asset against $850k in debt to the FDIC. The CPPIF shortly thereafter quietly declares bankruptcy, while Citibank walks away with a cool $1 million”. The taxpayer (under the auspices of the FDIC) loses $925k and Citibank makes a net profit of $925k after deducting its original $75K investment in the CPPIF. “Cynics believe the Geithner-Summers Inside Bidder Plan is exactly what it seems: a naked power grab of taxpayer money by Wall Street interests”, Jeffrey Sachs concludes.

The Liberty Bond Gambit as introduced in the New York Times 4/09/09: Now that the Hedge Funds have opted out since they know there is no living breathing value left in these toxic assets, the Obama administration is encouraging several large investment companies to create the financial crisis equivalent of Liberty Bonds, right out of World War I. But now we will call them bail out bonds. “This is an opportunity to forge an alliance between Main Street, Wall Street and K Street” said an executive at Black Rock, the big money management firm. “Its giving the guy on Main street an equal seat at the table next to the big guys”. Geithner described it as a win-win-win program. The hope seems to be that the small Mom and Pop investor on Main street will not be equipped with a crap-detector equivalent to those in use by the hedge funds who have already turned down Geithner’s Outside Bidder scheme.

Why is Geithner kept on? In the Atlantic Monthly of May 2009, Simon Johnson, formerly Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund and MIT Professor, states that: “The crash laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government. If the US was an merging market economy under the control of the IMF, they would tell it what they tell all countries in that situation – recovery will fail unless you break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform.”
~~IM

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There is NO EVIDENCE that the Bible is from or inspired by a God, or that either of these two man-made biblical scriptures -- foundational to Christianism -- is true: Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave is only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." NONE.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. ~Robert Ingersoll

All religion is a foolish answer to a foolish question. ~Thomas Shelby

The strongly religious fear our capacity for moral reasoning that does not require a magical, invisible deity. They fear our ability to be ethical without the threat of hell or the reward of heaven. They fear that our allegiance is not to this or that country, or this or that prophet, or this or that guru, but to humanity as a whole. ~Phil Zuckerman

The idea that God could only forgive our sins by having his son tortured to death as a scapegoat is surely, from an objective point of view, a deeply unpleasant idea. If God wanted to forgive us our sins, why didn’t he just forgive them? Why did he have to have his son tortured? ~Richard Dawkins

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon

All religions are lies and scams, and all believers are victims. ~David Silverman

We [atheists] have no martyrs, we have no saints. ~Christopher Hitchens

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. ~H L Mencken

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion. ~Jon Stewart

My 12th year was my most Christian and most boring year in my life. ~Chuck Berry

Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. ~Keith Parsons

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Christians don’t need to be born again, they need to grow up. ~John Shelby Spong

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. ~Alan Watts

Society is like a stew: If you don't stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top.~Edward Abbey

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~Buckminster Fuller

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one. ~ Richard Dawkins

I’m not saying there isn’t a god, but there isn’t a god who cares about people. And who wants a god who doesn’t give a shit? ~Robert Munsch

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. ~Arthur C. Clarke

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death
while praying for a fish. ~ Anon

When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. ~ Joseph Campbell

The only true definition of an atheist: a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in God or gods. ~Oxford English Dictionary

You have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Faith is just another word for gullibility.

I sang as one / Who on a tilting deck sings / To keep men's courage up, though the wave hangs / That shall cut off their sun. ~C. Day Lewis

Resilience Tools (Basic)

Freethought/Stoics

Religion Divides

The Wikipedia of Christian Terrorism (Link)

Books of the Freethinkers Bible

What is a fact beyond all doubt is that we share an ancestor with every other species of animal and plant on the planet. We know this because some genes are recognizably the same genes in all living creatures, including animals, plants and bacteria. And, above all, the genetic code itself — the dictionary by which all genes are translated — is the same across all living creatures that have ever been looked at. We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn't that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true...

The whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye — and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all-knowing god, mentions them at all! In fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. They don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or anesthetics. In fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive peoples who first started telling them! If these 'holy books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all-knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? -Richard Dawkins

Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws… It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such.

I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? -Zora Neale Hurston

Democratic Socialism

Socialist Alternative is the organization that spearheaded the campaign to elect Kshama Sawant to Seattle City Council, the first independent socialist elected in a major U.S. city in decades. We are a national organization fighting in our workplaces, communities, and campuses against the exploitation and injustices people face every day. We are community activists fighting against budget cuts in public services; we are activists campaigning for a $15/hour minimum wage and fighting, democratic unions; we are people of all colors speaking out against racism and attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and war, women and men fighting sexism and homophobia.

We believe the Republicans and Democrats are both parties of big business, and we are campaigning to build an independent, alternative party of workers and young people to fight for the interests of the millions, not the millionaires.

We see the global capitalist system as the root cause of the economic crisis, poverty, discrimination, war, and environmental destruction. As capitalism moves deeper into crisis, a new generation of workers and youth must join together to take the top 500 corporations into public ownership under democratic control to end the ruling elites’ global competition for profits and power.

We believe the dictatorships that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were perversions of what socialism is really about.

We are for democratic socialism where ordinary people will have control over our daily lives.

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated. ~Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Founder

In the history of the world, the number of times a supernatural anything has been proven true is zero. Every god, ghost, spirit, devil, possession, and miracle ever claimed true is a lie. No exceptions. The number of times an atheistic (godless) argument has been proven wrong by a theistic argument is zero... In contrast, every time a theist-versus-atheist argument has been settled, an atheistic argument has won. This does not mean science is antireligion; it just means (or rather, strongly implies) religion is wrong... I challenge anyone to find any scientifically valid testable proof of anything supernatural, ever. If you can prove it, even once, I'll quit my job. I'm not nervous, as it has never been done in history, because it's ALL a lie. ~David Silverman, President

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman